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THE CONTRIBUTION OF BOSTON TO AMERICAN "'J, ^ 

INDEPENDENCE. 



ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



Mayor and Citizens of Boston 



AT THE 



one hundred and twenty-first 
celebration of the declaration of independence 



MONDAY, JULY $, 1897 



BY 



/ 




EDWARD EVERETT HALE u 




BOSTON 

printed by order of the city council 

1 897 



^ 






Press of Municipal Printing Office 
Boston, Massachusetts 



73C 



€xh of %asiavi. 



In Board of Aldermen, Sept. 2, 1897. 
Resolved^ That the thanks of the City Council be, and are 
hereby tendered to the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D., 
for the very appropriate, interesting and eloquent oration 
delivered by him on the Fourth of July, in commemoration 
of the One Hundred and Twenty-first Anniversary of the 
Declaration of American Independence, and that he be 
requested to furnish a copy of the said address and his 
portrait, for publication. 

Adopted unanimously by a rising vote. Sent down for 
concurren9e. 

Perlie a. Dyar, 

Chairman. 

In Common Council, Sept. 23, 1897. 
Concurred unanimously by a rising vote. 

Joseph A. Conry, 

President. 

Approved Sept. 27, 1897. 

JOSIAH QuiNCY, 

Mayor. 

A true copy. 

Attest : 

John M. G-alvin, 

City Clerk. 



ORATION. 



Mr. Mayor and Fellow-Citizens : 

Faneuil Hall is the cradle of liberty, and the child 
was born not far away. It was in the council 
chamber of the Old State House yonder that " Amer- 
ican independence was born." 

These are the words of John Adams, whose fea- 
tures you are looking on. He assisted at the birth, 
and he has told for us the story. 

He says, speaking of that day : " Otis was a flame 
of fire. Otis hurried everything before him. Ameri- 
can independence was then and there born. In fif- 
teen years the child grew up to manhood, and 
declared himself free." 

When that moment came, the Congress of the 
United States was sitting in Philadephia. It had 
been summoned two years before, on the seventeenth 
of June, 1774 — St. Botolph's day, be it remembered, 
the saint's day of Boston. On that day Samuel 
Adams of Boston moved in the Provincial assembly, 
sitting at Salem, that a Continental Congress should 
be called at Philadelphia. At Philadelphia, observe, 
because there was no English garrison there. Samuel 
Adams took the precaution to lock the door of the 
Salem assembly chamber on the inside. While the 



6 Oration. 

motion was under discussion the English Governor 
Gage's secretary appeared at the outside of the door 
to dissolve the assembly. But Sam Adams was 
stronger than he. The delegates were chosen, he 
was one; James Bowdoin, John Adams, Thomas 
Gushing and Robert Treat Paine^ were the others. 

All of these were from Boston; so little was 
known of the jealousy which dabsters in politics now 
speak of between the city and the country. There 
was no such jealousy then, and there is really no 
such jealousy now; none except in the minds of 
people who, for their own ends, play with the 
machinery of government. 

That day, the seventeenth of June, John Adams 
entered public life, as he says. He presided at the 
crowded town meeting held on the saint's day in 
this hall. 

Observe that, excepting him, who by misfortune 
was not born on this peninsula, all these delegates 
to that Congress which changed the government of 
the world were Boston boys. And, almost, of course, 
as we Latin School boys say, they had learned de- 
mocracy and liberty as they read their Latin and 
Greek at our Latin School. Sam Adams himself is 
now, I believe, unanimously regarded as the author, 
or father, of American independence. James Bow- 
doin was afterward governor of the new-born State. 

1 1'ainc was boru iu Boston, but for a part of liis life he practised law in Taunton. 
He sat in tlie Assembly for Taiiuton, and was regarded as representing the " Old 
Colony " in the Continental Congress. 



Fifth of July, 1897. 7 

Thomas Gushing gave place to Gerry, before the 
declaration. Paine, in his own life, in the life of his 
son, as in the life of his grandson to-day, never 
wearied in the service of the nation. 

Two years were to pass before the declaration was 
drawn and signed. When that time came, om* dele- 
gation had been changed by the substitution of Han- 
cock for Bowdoin, and Gerry for Gushing. Franklin, 
another Latin School boy, served with John Adams 
and Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman and Robert 
Livingston, on the committee who made the draft of 
the declaration. And when the time comes for its 
signature, John Hancock's name " stands at the top 
of freedom's roll." We have a fancy, in that Latin 
School, that, as you look at the forty-five signatures, 
you can find a resemblance in the beautiful handwrit- 
ing of John Hancock, of Samuel Adams, of Robert 
Treat Paine, of Benjamin Franklin and of William 
Hooper, the five boys who were taught to write when 
they were at our school. 

We need not be over-modest in Boston when we 
speak of such men and such times. American inde- 
pendence was born in our old State House, Sam 
Adams was the father of American independence. 
Liberty was cradled in this hall. Franklin and 
Adams, of those who drew the declaration, were born 
here. John Hancock was sent to preside over that 
assembly, and accepted bravely the honors and the 
perils of his great position. I could not anywhere 



8 Oration. 

give any history, however succinct, of the Declaration ; 
I could not account for the America of to-day, with- 
out saying all this — no, not if I were addressing 
the Shah of Persia in his palace in Ispahan. Fortu- 
nately for me, I am not addressing him. I am 
speaking to my fellow-townsmen. And in the privacy 
of this assembly I propose to speak in some detail 
to-day of the contribution which Boston made in 
securing the independence of America. I may wander 
a little from my subject, as I have to say what the 
people of other parts of this Commonwealth had to 
do in that business. They are not jealous of us, as 
we are not jealous of them. 



I HAVE sometimes feared that in his own city 
John Hancock is not honored as he should be. 
Woe to the city which neglects the memory of its 
great men ! I heard with dismay a few days ago 
that the Sons of the Revolution have not money 
enough to pay for the bronze statue of Hancock 
which they have ordered. Why, thanks to Hancock 
and to the men behind hun, there is money enough 
in Boston to pay for fifty statues in gold to his 
memory, if the people of to-day understand what 
Independence means to them ! 

Here was John Hancock, a young merchant of 
fashion, of family and of wealth — things which in 
those days were highly considered in Boston. He 



Fifth of July, 1897. 9 

was surrounded by all the temptations which sur- 
round young men of fashion, of family, and of 
wealth in a provincial city, and Boston was then a 
provincial city. As things go in such cities, the 
nephew of a rich merchant, surrounded with every 
indulgence, is not apt to throw himself into what 
is called rebellion against his king. But such a 
young gentleman as that, after the lines of rebel- 
lion are fairly drawn, when all the world knows 
what he means, accepts what are the critical positions 
of selectman and of a Boston member of the House of 
Assembly. That means that, at the age of twenty-nine, 
he accepts the lead of Sam Adams, who is already 
laying his large plans for the independence of this 
empire. The royal governors are surprised and dis- 
tressed. In ways known to such men from that 
time to this time, they try to separate Hancock 
from his alliance with the people. He is offered 
this, and he is offered that, and he refuses the offers. 
And so, after the battle of Lexuigton, when George 
III. offers a pardon to almost everybody else in 
Massachusetts, the two great exceptions are Samuel 
Adams and John Hancock. 

The day when the young Hancock was chosen into 
the General Assembly, John and Sam Adams hap- 
pened to meet on the mall at the head of Winter 
street. They walked up and down the mall, and 
as they came in sight of Hancock's elegant mansion, 
the older man said to the younger: "This town has 



10 Oration, 

done a wise thing to-day; they have made that 
young man's fortune their own." And John Adams 
says more than once that John Hancock was one 
of the younger men whom Samuel Adams, so to 
speak, took in training as soon as he saw then* 
ability to serve the Commonwealth. When one 
remembers that others m the same company were 
the second Josiah Qumcy and Joseph Warren, one 
sees how great is the compliment implied. There is 
not a j^oungster of us all who might not be proud 
to have been selected as a special friend of freedom, 
and a possible martyr in her cause, by such a leader 
as Samuel Adams. 

In later life, when there was time to quarrel, the 
master and his pupil parted. For thirteen years 
Hancock and Adams were not friends, although 
George III. had ^vritten tlieu^ names in the same 
line, and so writing, had helped their immortality. 
But, really, that quarrel is very little to you and 
me. Because Hancock was a rich man and lived in 
a palace, and Adams was a poor man, who lived by 
the scanty profits of his retail shop, we can well see 
that there might have been petty issues which 
should part them in daily life. No matter for that. 
For nothing can part them in the great record of 
history. That record is that the older man con- 
ceived of the Declaration of Independence, and that 
the younger man, though he had a rope around his 
neck, was the first to sign that declaration. Showy 



Fifth of July, 1897. 11 

and pompous in his daily life, if you please, but he 
knew the responsibilities of wealth so well that in 
time of famine, brought on by Kmg George, his 
agents had the charge of the relief of three hundred 
families. Shortsighted as to etiquette in his dealings 
with Washington, you say? But this is because he 
has the honor of Massachusetts at heart. He will 
not, by any etiquette, let Massachusetts take a lower 
place than belongs to her. 

John Adams named George Washhigton, the Vir- 
ginia colonel, to the command of the American 
army just before Warren died at Bunker Hill. 
John Adams writes privately, what he did not say 
in public, that up to that time, the services and the 
sacrifices of John Hancock in the cause of the 
nation had been immeasurably beyond those of 
George Washington. Time has gone by, and there 
is fame enough for both of them. But you and I 
are not going to forget that, when the moment for 
battle came, and the blow was to be struck which' 
should declare independence, our own John Hancock, 
bone of our bone and blood of our blood, was 
found worthy to be named by the side of George 
Washington. 

And by way of showing that wealth is not always 
vulgar, and that the man of the largest wealth may 
still be the truest servant of the people, it is worth 
while to say, in passing, of these two leaders whose 
names have thus come down together in the history 



12 Oration. 

of this day, that George Washington was the richest 
man in Virginia and John Hancock the richest man 
in Massachusetts. Such men were not ashamed nor 
afraid of the probable honor of bemg the first mar- 
tyrs when they committed themselves as the fast 
friends of America. 

Massachusetts may refuse her statues if she doubts 
as to the achievements of her sons, but she does not 
doubt nor refuse such an honor when it is proposed 
for John Hancock. 

In those days men were praised when they made 
sacrifices for the nation. Nay, States and towns ex- 
pected to make sacrifices ! I see, now, to my disgust, 
that every State is expected to stand for itself, and 
to forget that it is one member of a nation. Hancock 
knew better. On that great occasion when Washing- 
ton prepared to bombard and burn Boston, Hancock 
wrote in words which we will inscribe on the base of 
his statue : "All my property is there, but may God 
crown your attempt with success. I most heartily 
wish it, though individually I may be the great- 
est sufferer." Such is the motto of statesmen, of 
States, and of their senators. 



Mr. CnoATE said of Virginia that she was 'Hhe 
mother of great men and was not unmindful of 
her children." The remark is emmently true. 
But I am apt to think that Massachusetts, the 



Fifth of July, 1897. 13 

leader in the revolution, mother of great men, is 
sometimes unmindful of her children. The truth is 
that in the birthright of every son of Massachusetts 
he inherits the duty which is a privilege, or the 
privilege which is a duty, that first of all he 
must live to the glory of God. A Massachusetts boy 
or a Massachusetts man, a Massachusetts girl or a 
Massachusetts woman, must not live for himself 
alone — no, nor for herself alone. First of all we 
live for the common good and for the public ser- 
vice. I say this is ingrain in our make-up ; it is a 
part of our birthright privilege. And so it is that 
you shall have a man like Robert Treat Paine, a 
Massachusetts lawyer, who is taken from his daily 
duty to go to Philadelphia and engage in the direct 
work of treason. He is sent there, and he goes 
there ; openly and before the world he " devises war 
against the king." This is the definition of treason. 
It is a pity if we forget such men ; if we do not, 
on these great occasions of history or of ceremony, 
repeat then- names and commemorate their service. 
Here is your type, then, of the Massachusetts law- 
yer. In that remarkable case in which these people, 
hot with rebellion, decided the right and wrong of 
the Boston massacre by the calm methods of a civic 
trial, Paine appears on the one side and his friend 
Quincy on the other. He signs the Declaration of 
Independence; he is the first attorney-general of 
Massachusetts; he is a judge in the Superior Court. 



14 Oration. 

I do not wonder, and I do not complain, if, after 
a century, this honored name brings up, first, the 
memory of another honored Robert Treat Paine, of 
our own fellow-citizens, who is drawn by the deter- 
mination to serve mankind into the homes of the 
poorest, in his relief of those most unfortunate. 
And farther back, such is the magic of song that a 
thousand men will sing : 

"Ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves," 

and shall remember the Paine who wrote those 
words, for one who remembers his father, the 
stern jurist whose name I spoke just now. But 
there are justly honors enough for all. 



For a generation after the Declaration no one 
could have said or sung a word with regard to the 
great struggle without speaking of Joseph Warren, 
another of these younger men whom Samuel Adams 
loved. It does not seem to me that in our time he 
receives the tribute which is his due. Whoever else 
was second, the people of Massachusetts in 1775 
counted Warren first. It was because they had 
given him the rank of a major-general in their 
militia that he thought it his duty to appear at the 
redoubt at Charlestown, where he waived the com- 
mand, which was in the hands of a more experi- 
enced soldier, and where he fell. He died too soon 



Fifth of July, 1897. 15 

for his own fame. In the work of those critical years, 
which needed courage and decision as perhaps no other 
years in history ever needed them, Warren had shown 
already that he was a leader of men. But in our time 
he has shown this only to those who study old archives, 
who disinter old letters from their graves, and then 
sadly ask themselves what might have been. 

To the country, his loss seemed at the time 
almost irreparable. The language used by those who 
knew him, and by those who only knew about him, 
is the language of the most profound regret, as if 
the national cause in his death had sustained a 
great disaster. We know to-day, what they did not 
know, that the battle fought on St. Botolph's day, 
on our own hill yonder, was not only the first 
pitched battle of the American revolution, but that 
in a certain sense it was the last. For that battle 
really decided the contest, as I think all military 
men would say. From that tune till the surrender 
at Yorktown, no English general had the temerity 
to order troops to attack any military work fitly 
manned by Americans.-^ From that time till the end, 
the war on the part of England was generally, with 
a few distinguished exceptions, a series of Fabian 
campaigns — campaigns of endurance and waiting, of 
hoping for a collapse which never came. 

iJdo not forget the desperate attack on Red Bank in 1777 and its terrible failure. 
This was the Bunker Hill of Pennsylvania; but this attack was ordered, not by an 
English officer, but by Donop, a Hessian, who died of his wounds. And Howe, who 
had seen Bunker HiU, would never have made so costly an error. Poor Donop died 
eaying, " I die the victim of my ambition, and of the avarice of my sovereign." 



16 Oration. 

It is of such campaigns that, at the end of six 
years, poor Cowper sang that the English troops 

"With opium drugged, 
Snore to tlie murmurs of the Atlantic wave." 

Such is the lesson which was taught by the 
"embattled farmers" who surrounded Warren when 
he died. But the men of their time did not under- 
stand that lesson. In that time men spoke of 
Bimker Hill with tears of rage. They spoke of it 
as I remember six and thirty years ago we spoke 
here of the first Bull Run. In the midst of that 
rage there was this pathetic sorrow, that Warren, 
the first man in Massachusetts, most beloved and 
most trusted, had lost his life. His children were 
adopted by the State, a monument to his memory 
was ordered, which the piety of other generations 
built. And to-day, after four generations have passed, 
you and I must not forget the service which had 
won such sorrow. His monument, thank God and 
our fathers, is secure! 

Listen to what Daniel Webster said of him — who 
knew hundreds of men who had known Warren 
well. Daniel Webster was not used to exaggerate. 
And he knew what he was saying: 

But, ah! Him! the first great martyr in this great 
cause I Him ! the premature victim of bis o"svn self-devoting 
heart. Him ! the head of our civil councils, and the des- 
tined leader of our military bands, whom nothing brought 



Fifth op July, 1897. 17 

hither but the unquenchable fire of his own spirit. Him! 
cut off by Providence in the hour of overwhelming anxiety 
and thick gloom, falling, ere he saw the star of his country 
rise; pouring out his generous blood, like water, before he 
knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of 
bondage ! How shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle 
the utterance of thy name ! Our poor work may perish, but 
thine shall endure. This monument may moulder away; 
the sohd ground it rests upon may sink down to the level of 
the sea, but thy memory shall not fail. Wheresoever among 
men a heart shall be found that beats to the transports of 
patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred 
with thy spirit. 



When Washington arrived in Cambridge, at the 
beginning of July, 1775, he found the English army 
blockaded in Boston. The battle of Bunker Hill had 
been fought. Strong works on Prospect Hill and the 
other hills in Somerville made any advance of the 
English troops over Charlestown Neck impossible. 
Efficient works on Charles river blocked the passage 
against any boats sent from the squadron up that 
river. The strong fortification had been begun which, 
under the auspices of my friend here, has just now 
been restored, on the heights of Roxbury, and 
blocked the way for any such "military promenade" 
as Percy had made in April of that year. These 
works had been designed by Henry Knox, another of 
our Latin School boys. 

He kept the leading bookstore in Boston, at the 
head of King street, a place where English officers 



18 Oration. 

looked in for the latest books. He kept himself 
well supphed with the books on tactics and all mil- 
itary art; he studied these books himself while he 
sold them to the enemies of his comitry. 

When Paddock, famous for the elms, left Boston 
for England, he recommended Knox as his successor 
in command of the artillery company. With such 
training, Knox joined Ward at Cambridge, as soon 
as Ward took command of the army. He recom- 
mended himself at once to Washington. By Wash- 
ington's appointment, probably at Knox's own 
suggestion, he. was sent to Ticonderoga to bring 
across the mountains the artillery which Ethan Allen 
captured there. With the arrival of that artillery, 
the works which he had built could be properly 
armed. It would have been hot shot from his 
cannon which would have destroyed the wooden 
town of Boston had it been determined, in John 
Adams's phrase, to "smoke the rats out of their 
hole." 

From the first, Washington saw the ability and 
merits of this great man. Then, at Washington's sug- 
gestion, he was made a brigadier in the Continental 
army. At Washington's request, after Knox's distin- 
guished service at Yorktown, he was made a major- 
general. Washington made him secretary of war and 
of the navy, when the nation became a nation. It 
is hard to say what would have become of the 
infant cause of independence had it not been for 



Fifth of July, 1897. 19 

Henry Knox. The finest line in Dwight's " Conquest 
of Canaan" gives Knox his epitaph: 

"And Knox created all the stores of war." 

One is glad to say that the vigor of such a man 
is preserved generation after generation among his 
descendants. More than one of them has done 
essential service to the state. It was a grandson of 
Knox who led the way in the naval attacks of the 
nation in the capture of Fort Fisher and of Mobile. 



I MUST leave to some other orator, better equipped 
for his task than I am, to give the whole of this 
sacred hour on some future Fourth of July to the 
memory of Samuel Adams, the father of American 
independence. He, too, like Hancock, was so eager 
in later life that Massachusetts should not lose one 
leaf from her laurel crown that he was coy and 
doubtful when the constitution of the nation was 
brought to him for his approval. Yet here, too, it 
is to be said that, when the moment came for the 
great decision, Adams was willing to sacrifice his own 
pride for the welfare of the whole. His decision 
saved the constitution. He was too great a man to 
sacrifice Massachusetts on the altar of "separate 
sovereignty. " 

Later generations have remembered fondly, what in 
commencement week is worth repeating, the subject 



20 Oration. 

of his master's address at Cambridge thirty years 
before the revolution : " Whether it be lawful to resist 
the supreme magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot 
otherwise be preserved." 

I am fond of thinking that from that moment 
forward Adams must have called together around 
him the younger men of Boston, perhaps in some 
social club of which we have forgotten the name, in 
which they were indoctrinated with the eternal princi- 
ples of home rule, in which they learned the cate- 
chism of independence. Samuel Adams saw, I should 
say, before any other public man saw, that the colo- 
nies were in fact independent. It is a pity that in 
om* anniversary orations we do not always recollect 
this. The declaration which we celebrate to-day was 
a declaration of past history and present truth. 
"These united colonies are, and of right ought to be, 
free and independent States." 

It is not the declaration of a future which one 
hopes for, as the people of Crete to-day might declare 
that they will be independent to-morrow and in the 
future. It is the declaration of what has been for 
generations, of what is on this Fourth of July, 1776, 
of what shall be till time shall end. The State of 
Massachusetts was independent under its old charter. 
It coined its own money, it made its own wars, it 
signed its own treaties of peace. When King 
Philip, who could call more men into the field than 
the colony of Massachusetts could, attacked her, 



Fifth of July, 1897. 21 



Massachusetts fought with him and conquered him. 
And when some friends in England asked why 
Massachusetts had not sent to England for assist- 
ance, Massachusetts proudly replied that England 
had no business in the affair. In fact, England did 
not send an ounce of powder or lead for that death 
struggle. Even after William III., who knew what 
power was, and who meant to hold it in his hands 
— after he sent us the second charter, the colony 
taught every successive governor that he was 
dependent upon Massachusetts. Every judge and 
every governor must receive his salary from the 
Massachusetts treasury. 

And when she chose, Massachusetts erected monu- 
ments to her friends in Westminster Abbey. There 
were the vestiges of a certain royal dignity; the 
lion and the unicorn were on the town house; the 
crown and the mitre were in King's Chapel. But 
the crown could not search a house unless the 
colony granted the writ of assistance. 

That is what the Declaration of Independence 
expresses in those central words: "These united 
colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and 
independent States." 

"Daughter am I in my mother's house, 
But mistress in my own." 



John Adams himself has left to us the history 
of his time, in which he filled a place so large. 



22 Oration. 

Impetuous even to audacity, a magnificent hater, he 
made enemies with the greatest ease. It was once 
said of the Adams family, that "they never turn 
their backs on any but their friends." It has fol- 
lowed with John Adams that he, also, has not had 
the honor that he deserved. He was not in the 
ranks of battle, but in debate and in diplomacy he 
showed that fight was in him, to the very sole of 
his foot, if he were sure that he was m the right. 

When the English commissioner, Oswald, sent the 
treaty of peace home from Paris, he said: '"'If we 
had not given way in the article of the fishery, we 
should have had no treaty at all. Mr. Adams 
declared that he would never put his hand 
to any treaty if the restraints proposed were not 
dispensed with." 

They asked Adams what he would do if they 
insisted on these restraints. " Fight twenty years 
more," he said. Seventy-eight years after, his 
illustrious grandson had to write in much the same 
strain to the minister of the same nation. And yet 
there have been men called statesmen in America 
who have offered to cede these rights of free fishing 
in the ocean as they might give away a cigar stub ! 

John Adams was no such man as that. Unfortu- 
nately for him, and for his country, therefore, he 
was jealous of other men; he suspected other men. 
He suspected Franklm; he suspected Jay, both as 
pure patriots as ever lived. But no man ever 



Fifth of July, 1897. 23 

suspected him of swerving from his country's cause, 
in his own interest or in that of any other man. 
The country first — the country second — the country 
always ! Such men as that do not need statues for 
their memorial! But all the more they deserve 
them. 



Now I come to Benjamin Franklin. An accom- 
plished scholar, born in Germany, once asked me 
why in Boston we were so chary of our honors to 
Benjamin Franklin, seeing Boston is best known 
by half the world as Franklin's birthplace. I could 
only say, as I said just now, that we had so many 
great men to commemorate that we could not say 
half we would about any of them. But it was a 
poor apology. 

Franklin is the oldest of our signers of the 
declaration. At the time of Sam Adams's birth, 
Franklin is leaving Boston for his Philadelphia 
home. Fifty-three years after, as a representative of 
Pennsylvania, he signs the declaration in what my 
friend, the old writing-master, Mr. Jonathan Snell- 
ing, used to call in one of his writing book copies 
the " Boston style of writing." 

In the same year he crossed the ocean to France, 
and arrived in Paris just before Christmas. Lord 
Stormont, the English ambassador, at once reported 
his arrival in England, to be told in reply by his 



24 Oration. 

chief, Lord North, that he need not distress himself 
"about the movements of an old man of seventy." 
But before the old man of seventy had done with 
France he had dictated the treaty of independence. 
He had compelled George III. — the Brummagem 
Louis XIV. — to surrender half his empire, and by 
far the better half, as it has proved. 

So majestic was Franklin's diplomacy that when 
the English ministry compelled the House of Com- 
mons to ratify the treaty, it was openly said that 
America had seven negotiators to make it, while the 
King of England had none. 

So was it that the town of Boston — will the 
Mayor let me say the Latin School? — sent the dip- 
lomatist to Eiu-ope who crowned the work of 
independence, as in Samuel Adams she had kept at 
home the far-seeing statesman who began it. These 
are our jewels! 

I Far in advance of all other men m the work of 
independence are the two greatest men yet born in 
America — Washington and Franklin. Two men 
who honored each other, absolutely and without 
jealousy. One, in America, established independence; 
one, in Eiurope, made independence possible. The 
croakers tell us that in government by democ- 
racy the people cannot find their true leaders, and 
do not trust them when found. Tell me in what 
oligarchy, in what empire, was ever a people so 
loyal to a leader, in good report and in evil fortune, 



Fifth of July, 1897. 25 

as the people of America to Washington? And in 
what empire or in what oligarchy has any nation 
ever fomid a diplomatist who is to be named on the 
same day with Benjamin Franklin? 

Of leaders in lower rank I must not speak even 
to name them. First, second and last, here is the 
old Puritan sense of duty — the present service of the 
present God. It is in the hunger of Valley Forge; 
it is in the wilderness tramp under Arnold; it is 
in the injustice of Newburgh, when the war was 
done. Duty first ! To serve where God has placed 
me! 

And when the field of such service is their own 
field the triumph is simply magnificent. 

I must not even attempt to describe the work of 
Massachusetts at sea in the war of independence. 
Enough to say that the treaty of peace was forced 
on England by seven years of losses at sea. Her 
enemy was Massachusetts. In the year 1777 King 
George employed 45,000 men in the English navy, 
in all oceans of the world. In the same year New 
England employed against him 80,000 men upon the 
Atlantic alone. Of these nine-tenths were from 
Massachusetts. 

Remember that, through the war, America had 
more men on the sea fighting the king than Wash- 
ington ever commanded on the land. Of these sea 
kings, nine-tenths, at the least, were from Massachu- 
setts. From first to last more than 3,000 prizes 



26 Oration. 

were taken from the English merchant marine by 
the American cruisers and privateers, most of them 
by the men of Massachusetts. And here is the 
reason why, when the war ended, the merchants of 
London insisted that it should end — the same men 
who, when it began, were hounding Lord North and 
George III. to their ruin. 



But this relentless clock [on the front gallery] 
will not let me name the gallant seamen who 

" Bore the stars and stripes 
O'er the oceans of the world." 

The Boston children gave the clock to this hall, 
in fear that Boston orators might speak too long. 

I have named only the signers of the Declaration, 
and the very first of the soldiers. Let us ask Mr. 
Tarbell and Mr. Benson to paint for us such a 
memorial as Rembrandt would have given to Hol- 
land — if ever Holland had such a group of men. 
It shall be a painting of several of them together. 
They shall sit around the hospitable board of Han- 
cock. He shall make his peace with Sam Adams, 
so that he may give a fit welcome to Franklin on 
some visit. The portrait of Warren shall look down 
upon the gathering. John Adams shall be leading 
in the talk, Robert Paine listening serene, while the 
younger Paine wants to be humming *'Hail Colum- 



Fifth of July, 1897. 27 

bia" to Knox, his friend. And we will hang the 
picture in the Old South, or in the town house on 
King street, or in Faneuil Hall. 



And here we turn from yesterday to to-morrow. 
And here are our lessons for our boys and girls, for 
our young men and maidens. They need not study 
them in catechisms. They need not repeat them 
in words. They are object lessons, to be learned 
as they play ball in sight of Sam Adams's State 
House, or beneath the shadow of the monument 
on Bunker's Hill. 

I was talking once of education with a Japanese 
prince. He said to me, in that supernaturally good 
English in which they speak: "We do not give so 
much time to arithmetic, in our schools, as you do. 
We think arithmetic makes men sordid." 

So do I. And I asked, a little nervously, "To 
what do you give the time?" 

" We teach them morals and history." 

Morals and history! Might I not say that our 
boys and girls can drink in their morals as they see 
their history? This is why we urge on the teach- 
ers and on the boys and girls, in the studies of 
the Old South and in the work of the schools, 
to begin with home history, and to make house- 
hold words of its lessons. To learn first and last 
that they are not alone; that they hold even part 



28 Oration. 

and privilege with so many others in the duty 
and the fame of a city not second to any city 
in the world. First and last, duty; duty to each 
and all, right and left, who in this city live. For 
this they shall be bred and trained in the tradi- 
tions of their fathers. 

They shall learn, first, second and last, to trust the 
people of whom they are and for whom they live. 
"We shall not discourage any meeting of the people, 
whether round a tree in the Common or here in 
Faneuil Hall. We shall exult in every effort to 
lift up the people, that there may be less and 
less of the labor or drudgery which wears men 
out, and more and more work in which spirit 
rules matter. We shall exult in every form of 
education, the Public Library, the evening schools, 
Mr. Hill's and Mr. Stewart's institutes of industry, 
which lift up the people and give the people its 
chance against any smaller competition. For this, 
and for this only, are we to study the past, that 
"we, the people" of Massachusetts, may rule Mass- 
achusetts more happily in the future! 

The boy who takes a stranger to the telegraph 
office on State street, shall say to him : " Here 
Crispus Attucks died. He is our first martyr; he is 
from a despised race, but Massachusetts made him 
a freeman, and so he died for her." The boy who 
takes his cousin to see the azaleas in the garden, 
shall say : "It was here that Washington hoped 



Fifth of July, 1897. 29 

to enter Boston on the ice, and so we have put 
his statue here." The Charlestown boy who takes 
his friends to the Navy Yard shall say : "It was 
here that the boats from the other side brought 
over the Redcoats, and here they rallied after run- 
ning down the hill." The boy who carries a par- 
cel through Washington street shall say : " Here 
was ^Orange street;' here was ^Newbury street;' 
but we moved those names when we named 
it for Washington, after he rode in, in triumph, 
while the English fleet, retiring, whitened the bay 
yonder." 

I believe if I were in your Honor's chair next 
January, on one of those holidays which nobody 
knows what to do with, I would commemorate the 
first great victory of 1775. To do this well, 
I would issue an order that any school-boy in 
Boston who would bring his sled to School street 
might coast down hill all day there, in memory 
of that famous coasting lq January, 1775, when 
the Latin School boys told the English general that 
to coast on School street was their right "from 
time immemorial," and when they won that right 
from him. 

We have made a pleasure park of the old Fort 
Independence, thanks, I believe, to our friend Mr. 
O'Neil. Let no young man take his sweetheart 
there, where sheep may be grazing between the 
useless cannon, without pointuig out to her the berth 



30 Oration. 

of the "Somerset" on St. Botolph's day, the day 
democracy began her march round the world. Let 
him show her the bastions on Dorchester Heights. 
Let him say to her : "It was here that Lord Percy 
gathered the flower of King George's army to storm 
the heights yonder. And it was from this beach 
that they left Boston forever." 

When he takes her to his old school-house he 
shall ask first to see the handwriting of some of 
our old boys — of Franklin, of Sam Adams, of John 
Hancock, of Paine, of Bowdoin, and of Hooper. 
They shall not stop the car at Hancock street 
without a memory of the man who first signed the 
Declaration. They shall cross the pavement on 
Lynde street, and he shall say : " These stones have 
been red with blood from Bunker Hill." And when 
this day of days comes round, the first festival in 
our calendar, the best boy of our High School, or 
of oiu- Latin School, shall always read to us the 
Declaration in which the fathers announced the 
truth to the world. 

And shall this be no poor homage to the past — 
worship deaf and dumb. As the boy goes on his 
errand he shall say, "To such duty I, too, am born. 
I am God's messenger." As the young man tells 
the story to his sweetheart he shall say, " We are 
God's children also, you and I, and we have om: 
duties." They look backward, only to look forward. 
" God needs me that this city may still stand in the 



Fifth op July, 1897. 31 

fore front of his people's land. Here am I. God 
may draft me for some special duty, as he drafted 
Warren and Franklin. Present ! Ready for service ! 
Thank God, I come from men who were not afraid 
in battle. Thank God, I am born from women 
whose walk was close to him. Thank God, I am 
his son." And she shall say: "I am his daughter." 

He has nations to call to his service. "Here 
am I." 

He has causeways to build, for the march forward 
of his people. " Here am I." 

There are torrents to bridge, highways in deserts. 
"Here am I." 

He has oceans to cross. He has the hungry 
world to feed. He has the wilderness to clothe in 
beauty. "Here am I." 

God of heaven, be with us as thou wert with the 
fathers ! 

God of heaven, we will be with thee, as the 
fathers were ! 

Boys and girls, young men and maidens, listen to 
the voices which speak here; even from the silent 
canvas. 

"You spring from men whose hearts and lives are pure — 
Their aim was steadfast, as their purpose sure. 
So live that Children's Children in their day 
May bless such Fathers' Fathers as they pray." 



A LIST 



BOSTON MUNICIPAL ORATORS. 



By C. W. ERNST. 



BOSTON ORATORS 

APPOINtED BY THE MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES. 



For the Anniversary of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770. 

KOTE. — The Fifth -ol-March orations were published in handsome quarto editions, 
now very scarce; also collected in hook form in 1785, and again in 1807. The oration 
of 1776 was delivered in Watertown. 

1771. — Lo VELL , James . 
1772. — Warren, Joseph. 

1773. — Church, Benjamin. 

1774. — Hancock, John.* 
1775. — Warren, Joseph. 
1776. — Thacher, Peter. 
1777. — HiCHBORN, Benjamin. 

1778. — Austin, Jonathan Williams. 
1779. — Tudor, William. 
1780. — Mason, Jonathan, Jun. 

1781. — Dawes, Thomas, Jun. 

1782. — MiNOT, G-eorge Richards. 

1783. — Welsh, Thomas. 



For the Anniversary of National Independence, Jidy 4, 1776. 

Note. — A collected edition, or a fuU collection, of these orations has not been made. 
For the names of the orators, as officially printed on the title pages of the orations, 
see the Municipal Register of 1890. 

1783. — Warren, John.^ 
1784. — HiCHBORN, Benjamin. 
1785. — Gardner, John. 

a Reprinted in Newport, R. I., 1774, 8vo, 19 pp. 

1 Reprinted in "Wan-en's Life. The orations of 1783 to 1786 were published in large 
quarto; the oration of 1787 appeared in octavo; the oration of 1788 was printed in 
small quarto; aU succeeding orations appeared in octavo, with the exceptions stated 
under 1863 and 1876. 



36 APPENDIX. 

1786. — Austin, Jonathan Loring. 
1787. — Dawes, Thomas, Jun. 
1788. — Otis, Harrison Gray. 
1789. — Stillman, Samuel. 
1790. — Gray, Edward. 

1791. — Crafts, Thomas, Jun. 

1792. — Blake, Joseph, Jun.** 
1793. — Adams, John Quincy.'^ 
1794. — Phillips, John. 
1795. — Blake, George. 

1796. — Lathrop, John, Jun. 

1797. — Callender, John. 

1798. — QUINCY, JOSIAH.2'8 

1799. — Lowell, John, Jun.^ 
1800. — Hall, Joseph. 

1801. — Paine, Charles. 

1802. — Emerson, William. 

1803. — Sullivan, William. 
1804. — Danforth, Thomas.^ 
1805. — Button, Warren. 

1806. — Channing, Francis Dana.* 

1807. — Thacher, Peter.2. ^ 

1808. — Ritchie, Andrew, Jun.' 

1809. — Tudor, William, Jun.^ 
1810. — TowNSEND, Alexander. 
1811. — Savage, James. '^ 
1812. — Pollard, Benjamin.* 

1813. — Livermore, Edward St. Loe. 

' Passed to a second edition. 

' Delivered another oration in 1826. Quincy's oration of 1798 was reprinted, also, 
in Philadelpliia. 

•Not printed. 

« On Feb. 26, 1811, Peter Tliachcr's name was changed to Peter Oxenbridge 
Thacher. (List of persons whose Names have been Changed in MassachusettB, 1780- 
1892, p. 21.) 



APPENDIX. B7 

1814. — "Whitwell, Benjamin. 

1815. — Shaw, Lemuel. 

1816. — Sullivan, George.^ 

1817. — Channing, Edward Tyrrel. 

1818. — Gray, Francis Galley. 
1819. — Dexter, Franklin. 
1820. — Lyman, Theodore, Jun. 
1821. — LoRiNG, Charles Greely.^ 
1822. — Gray, John Chipman. 
1823. — Curtis, Charles Pelham.^ 
1824. — Bassett, Francis. 

1825. — Sprague, Charles.' 
1826. quincy, josiah.' 

1827. — Mason, William Powell. 

1828. — Sumner, Bradford. 

1829. — Austin, James Trecothick. 

1830. — Everett, Alexander Hill. 

1831. — Palfrey, John Gorham. 

1832. — QuiNCY, JosiAH, Jun. 

1833. — Prescott, Edward Goldsborough. 

1834. — Fay, Richard Sullivan. 

1835. — HiLLARD, George Stillman. 
1836. — Kinsman, Henry Willis. 

1837. — Chapman, Jonathan. 

1838. — Winslow, Hubbard. "The Means of the Per- 

petuity and Prosperity of our Republic." 

1839. — Austin, Ivers James. 

1840. — Power, Thomas. 

1841. — Curtis, George Ticknor.® "The True Uses 

of American Revolutionary History." ^ 
1842, — Mann, Horace.^ 
1843. — Adams, Charles Francis. 

8 Six editions up to 1831. Reprinted also in his Life and Letters. 
' Reprinted in his Municipal History of Boston. See 1798. 



38 APPENDIX. 

1844. — Chandler, Peleg Whitman. "The Morals of 

Freedom." 

1845. — SujrNER, Charles.^" "The True Grandeur of 

Nations." 

1846. — "Webster, Fletcher. 
1847. — Gary, Thomas Greaves. 

1848. — Giles, Joel. " Practical Liberty." 

1849. — Greenough, William Whitwell. "The Con- 
quering Republic." 

1850. — Whipple, Edwin Percy." "Washington and 
the Principles of the Revolution." 

1851. — Russell, Charles Theodore. 

1852. — King, Thomas Starr." " The Organization of 
Liberty on the Western Continent."" 

1853. — BiGELOw, Timothy.^^ 

1854. — Stone, Andrew Leete.* 

1855. — Miner, Alonzo Ames. 

1856. — Parker, Edward Griffin. "The Lesson of 

'76 to the Men of '56." 
1857. — Alger, William Rounseville." "The Genius 

and Postui'e of America." 

1858. — Holmes, John Somers.'^ 

1859. — Sumner, George.-'* 

1860. — Everett, Edward. 
1861. — Parsons, Theophilus. 
1862. — Curtis, George Ticknor.^ 
1863. — Holmes, Oliver Wendell." 
1864. — Russell, Thomas. 

« Delivered another oration In 1862. 

» There are five editions; only one by the City. 

10 Passed through three editions in Boston and one In London, and was answered 
In a pamphlet, Remarks upon an Oration delivered by Charles Sumner .... July 
4th, 1845. By a Citizen of Boston. See Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, by 
Edward L. Pierce, vol. ii. 337-384. 

" There is a second edition. (Boston : Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1850. 49 pp. 12».) 

" First publislicd by tlie City in 1892. 

" This and a number of the succeeding orations, up to 1861, contain the speechee, 
toasts, etc., of the City dinner usually given in Faneuil Hall on the Fourth of July. 



APPENDIX. 39 

1865. — Manning, Jacob Merrill. "Peace under 

Liberty." 

1866. — LoTHROP, Samuel Kirkland. 

1867. — Hepworth, George Hughes. 

1868. — Eliot, Samuel. "The Functions of a City." 

1869. — Morton, Ellis Wesley. 

1870. — Everett, William. 

1871. — Sargent, Horace Binney. 

1872. — Adams, Charles Francis, Jun. 

1873. — Ware, John Fothergill Waterhouse. 

1874. — Frothingham, Richard. 

1875. — Clarke, James Freeman. 
1876. — Winthrop, Robert Charles." 

1877. — Warren, William Wirt. 

1878. — Hbaly, Joseph. 

1879. — Lodge, Henry Cabot. 

1880. — Smith, Robert Dickson.^* 

1881. — Warren, George Washington. " Our Repub- 

lic — Liberty and equality Founded on Law." 

1882. — Long, John Davis. 

1883. — Carpenter, Henry Bernard. "American 

Character and Influence." 

1884. — Shepard, Harvey Newton. 

1885. — Gargan, Thomas John. 

" Probably tour editions were printed in 1857. (Boston : Otlice Boston Daily Bee. 
60 pp.) Not until November 22, 1864, was Mr. Alger asked by the City to furnish a 
copy for publication. He granted the request, and the first official edition (J. E. Far- 
well & Co., 1864, 53 pp.) was then issued. It lacks the interesting preface and appendix 
of the early editions. 

15 There is another edition. (Boston : Ticknor & Fields, 1859. 69 pp.) A third 
(Boston: RockweU & Churchill, 1882. 46 pp.) omits the dinner at Faneuil Hall, the 
correspondence and events of the celebration. 

w There is a preliminary edition of twelve copies. (J. E. Farwell & Co., 1863. (7), 
71 pp.) It is " the first draft of the author's address, turned into larger, legible type, 
for the sole purpose of rendering easier its public delivery." It was done by " the 
liberality of the City Authorities," and is, typographically, the handsomest of these 
orations. This resulted in the large-paper 75-page edition, printed from the same 
type as the 71-page edition, but modified by the author. It is printed " by order of the 
Common Council." The regular edition is in 60 pp., octavo size. 



40 APPENDIX. 

1886. — Williams, George Fbederick. 

1887. — Fitzgerald, John Edward. 

1888. — Dillaway, William Edward Lovell. 

1889. — Swift, John Lindsay." "The American Citi- 

zen." 
1890. — Pillsbury, Albert Enoch. "Public Spirit." 

1891. — QuiNCY, JosiAH.^^ "The Coming Peace." 

1892. — Murphy, John Robert. 

1893. — Putnam, Henry Ware. "The Mission of 

Our People." 

1894. — O'Neil, Joseph Henry. 

1895. — Berle, Adolph Augustus. "The Constitution 
and the Citizen." 

1896. — Fitzgerald, John Francis. 

1897. — Hale, Edward Everett. "The Contribution 

of Boston to American Independence." 

»' There is a large paper edition of fifty copies printed from this type, and also an 
edition from the press of John Wilson & Son, 1876. 55 pp. 80. 

»' On Samuel Adams, a statue of whom, by Miss Anne Whitney, had just been 
completed for the City. A photograph of the statue is added. 

" Contains a bibliography of Boston Fourth of July orations, from 1783 to 1889, 
inclusive, compiled by Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library. 

*" Reprinted by the American Peace Society. 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF BOSTON TO AMERICAN 
INDEPENDENCE. 



ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



Aayor and Citizens of Boston 



AT THE 



ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIRST 
CELEBRATION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 



MONDAY, JULY S, 1897 



BY 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 



m. IBSSO. .^ 



BOSTON 

PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL 
1 897 



